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ADDRESS 



OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



AT THE 



FIRST ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE 
MOTION PICTURE BOARD OF TRADE 



NEW YORK CITY 

(THE BILTMORE) 

JANUARY 27, 1916 



WASHINGTON 
1916 



\ 



7 Lit 




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ADDRESS. 

Mr. Toastmaster and Ladies and Gentlemen : I wondered when 
I was on my way here what would be expected of me. It occurred to 
me that perhaps I would only be expected to go through the motions 
of a speech, and then I reflected that, never having seen myself speak 
and generally having my thoughts concentrated upon what I had to 
say, I had not the least notion what my motions were when I made 
a speech. Because it has never occurred to me in my simplicity to 
make a speech before a mirror. If you will give me time, I will 
rehearse this difficult part and return and perform it for you. 

I have sometimes been very much chagrined in seeing myself in 
a motion picture. I have wondered if I really was that kind of a 
"guy." The extraordinary rapidity with which I walked, for ex* 
ample, the instantaneous and apparently automatic nature of my 
motion, the way in which I produce uncommon grimaces, and alto- 
gether the extraordinary exhibition I make of myself sends me to 
bed very unhappy. And I often think to myself that, although all 
the world is a stage and men and women but actors upon it, after all 
the external appearances of things are very superficial indeed. I am 
very much more interested in what my fellow-men are thinking about 
than in the motions through which they are going. While we 
unconsciously display a great deal of human nature in our visible 
actions, there are some very deep waters which no picture can 
sound. 

When you think of a great nation, ladies and gentlemen, you are 
not thinking of a visible thing; you are thinking of a spiritual 
thing. I suppose a man in public office feels this with a peculiar 
poignancy, because what it is important for him to know is the real, 
genuine sentiments and emotions of the people that make up the 
nation. I found out what was going on in Mexico in a very singular 
way _by hearing a sufficiently large number of liars talk about it. I 
think the psychological explanation will interest you. 

You know that the truth is consistent with itself ; one piece matches 
another. Now no man is an inventive enough liar not to bring in 
large sections of truth in what he says, and after all the liars are 
done talking to you about the same subject it will come to your con- 
sciousness that long and large pieces of what they said matched; that 
in that respect they all said the same thing; that the variations are 
lies and the consistencies are the truth. They will not all tell you 
the same piece of the truth, so that if you hear enough of them, 

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you may get the whole of the truth. And yet it is very tedious to 
hear men lie. particularly when you know they are lying. You 
feel like reminding them that really your time i.s important to you 
and that you wish they would get down to business and tell you what 
is really so. but they do not. They want this adventure of their 
invention; they want to give an excursion to their minds before the}' 
get down to business. What I particularly object to is a very able 
man with a lot of inventions coming to me and lying to me. because 
then the interview is very tedious and long before we get down to 
business. I got to know that story so by heart that the last time a 
deputation visited me about Mexico I thought I would save time and 
I told them exactly what they were going to say to me. They went 
away very much confused; they wondered how I had heard it, 
because they knew it was not so. 

Yet underneath all of this are those great pulses which throb in 
great bodies of men and drive the great affairs of state, and I wonder 
how men venture to try to deceive a great nation. There never was a 
profounder saying than that of Lincoln that you can fool all the 
people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but 
you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, and the best way 
in Avhich to silence any friend of yours whom you know to be a fool is 
to induce him to hire a hall. Nothing chills pretense like exposure. 
Nothing will bear the tests of examination for a shorter length of 
time than pretense. At least so I try to persuade myself, and yet 
there are some humbugs that have been at large a long time. I 
suppose that there is always a rising generation whom they can fool, 
but the older heads ought not to permit themselves to be fooled. 

I should think that in a year like the year 1916, when there is to 
be a common reckoning for everybody, men would hurry up and 
begin to tell the truth. They are not hurrying about it; they are 
taking their time, but the American people are going to insist upon 
it before this year is over that everybody comes up and is counted 
on the great questions of the day. They are not going to take any 
excuses, they are not going to take any pretenses; they are going to 
insist upon the goods being delivered on the spot, and anybody that 
declines to deliver them is going to go bankrupt, and ought to go 
bankrupt. Everybody ought to get what is coining to him. 

But I came here to say that I hoped you would not believe that I 
am what I appear to be in the pictures you make of me. I really 
am a pretty decent fellow ! And I have a lot of emotions that do not 
show on the surface, and the things that I do not say would fill a 
library. The great curse of public life is that you are not allowed 
to say all the things that you think. Some of my opinions about 
some men are extremely picturesque, and if you could only take a 
motion picture of them, you would think it was Vesuvius in eruption. 



Yet all these volcanic forces, all these things that are going on inside 
of me, have to be concealed under a most grave and reverend exterior, 
and I have to make believe that I have nothing but respectable and 
solemn thoughts all the time. There is a lot going on inside of me 
that would be entertaining to any audience anywhere. 

I am very much complimented that you should have allowed me to 
come in at this late hour in your feast and, without partaking of the 
pleasures of conversation, to make you all, whether you would or not, 
listen to me talk. My object in life is not talking. I wish there were 
less talking to do. I wish that not everybody had to be persuaded to 
do the right thing. I wish that the things that are obvious did not 
have to be explained. I wish that principles did not have to be re- 
expounded. We all in our hearts agree upon the fundamental prin- 
ciples of our lives and of our life as a nation ; now we ought to tax 
ourselves with the duty of seeing that those principles are realized in 
action and no fooling about it. The only difficult things in life, 
ladies and gentlemen, are the applications of the principles of right 
and wrong. I can set forth the abstract principles of right and 
wrong, and so can you, but when it comes down to an individual item 
of conduct, whether in public affairs or in private affairs, there comes 
the pinch, — in the first place, to see the right way to do it ; and, in the 
second place, to do it that way. If we could only agree that in all 
matters of public concern we would adjourn our private interests, 
look each other frankly in the face and say, "We are all ready at 
whatever sacrifice of our own interest to do in common the thing that 
the common weal demands," what an irresistible force America would 
be ! I can point out to you a few men, — of course, I am not going to 
name them now, — whom every man ought to afraid of, because noth- 
ing but the truth resides in them. I have one in particular in mind 
whom I have never caught thinking about himself. I would not dare 
make a pretense in the presence of that man even if I wanted to. His 
eyes contain the penetrating light of truth before which all disguises 
fall away. 

Suppose we were all like that ! It would hasten the millenium 
immensely. And if Americans were always to do what when the 
real temper of America is aroused they do, the world would always 
turn to America for guidance and America would be the most potent 
and influential force in all the world. So that when I look at 
pictures, whether they move or whether they do not move, I think 
of all the deep sources of happiness and of pain, of joy and of misery, 
that lie beneath that surface, and I am interested chiefly in the heart 
that beats underneath it all. For I know that there is the pulse 
and the machinery of all the great forces of the world. 

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